Avaza - Features, Pricing, Alternatives, and More

Reviewed by Matthew Guay

Last updated June 3, 2016

Client projects don't start out as projects. They start instead as ideas clients would like you to work on, that new website redesign or copywriting project or logo design they need for their next big thing. So they get in touch, ask for a quote, and then hopefully decide to enlist your services.

That's when the project starts. But your team already needed help juggling info about the work way before the project actually started. So in Avaza, a client focused project management app, you'll start out where the work really starts: as an estimate.

Add your clients to Avaza, then start out by sending them an estimate for the services they want. You can include details and pricing, and even throw in a discount to sweeten the deal. Then, send it with a link or email—or even print the estimate and mail it to them. Once they accept, click the Actions button in the estimate and select Convert to Project, and you're finally ready to start on your real work.

Each project lets you manage tasks in a to-do list, with sections to break up your work into timeframes or workflows. Sections can include a start and end day, for a way to plan out a week's worth of work at a time. Or, you could move tasks to new sections as they're close to completion. Each task includes a discussion area to keep your team up to date on the task's progress, and a time section to track the estimated and total time spent on a task. There's no checkbox to mark tasks as completed, though. Instead, you'll find a menu on the right where you can mark tasks as Not Started, In Progress, or Completed for a quick way to see what's being worked on.

Then, there's always questions that come up during projects, questions which end up getting discussed in email threads or around the water cooler. Not with Avaza. Each project includes a Questions tab, where you can post a question for your team members and see their responses in-line. You could use it for regular messages and discussions, but by framing the messages as questions, you're far more likely to get an actionable response instead of lengthy discussions.

There's projects, and then there's the stuff that's always going on. Avaza is ready for both. In the Time & Expenses tab, you can track both time and expenses you spend specifically on tasks, as well as your recurring expenses—perhaps your office internet bill, say—that need tracked as well. Invoices, too, work with regular projects, with recurring invoices to send each month—perhaps for hosting charges your clients pay.

Use other tools to juggle your projects? Avaza projects are designed to work great with both email and calendar apps. Each project gets a unique email address, so you can email in tasks or forward client emails and have them automatically saved as tasks to the project. There's also an iCalendar feed so you can see due tasks along with the rest of your events. And when everything's done, clients can pay you for your work right into the PayPal or Stripe account you already rely on.

Avaza is a great way to pull every part of your projects together, from start to finish. It's simple, yet powerful enough to manage everything your team is working on, from one place.